I have no nostalgia for the e-series sets, but they are by far my favorite cards. I love the asymmetric borders and feel like it gives the cards a very clear identity and almost, I would say, personality. And the art of the WotC e-series sets are really just stellar, with easily collectible and great looking commons and uncommons. And like others mentioned above, I’m always finding new Expedition/Aquapolis/Skyridge cards that I wasn’t aware of, and everytime, I think to myself “I want this card eventually in my collection.”
I don’t know the history as well as others here, but even from just the art, I can see that the artists were given more artistic freedom during this era. There’s just so much diversity in the art in terms of style, feelings evoked, etc. The VS series strikes the same chord for me, but not the Nintendo e-reader sets. But I’m also not as familiar with those sets, I think.
YES! Though, Fusion strike has 284 cards… So, e-series aren’t THAT big.
I agree here. I stopped really caring during Neo Destiny. But e-reader cards just hit on a different chord. Somehow, they’re cool, unique, and probably because of the set design, they just show a genuine creativity and love from the design teams. Can’t help but love them in turn.
This is fascinating information to hear about. Thank you for sharing. I never thought about if these sets in terms of their playability. What were some of the other decent cards?
It was a lot of griping and speculation. You can find some on Pojo's Pokemon News - Archives of Pokemon News - Pojo.com. (Pojo was THE Pokémon website at the time.) But it does make sense that WotC had little interest in marketing a product which they knew they soon would no longer be profiting from, and furthermore was in direct competition with their flagship product.
Of course, it wasn’t WotC’s fault the cards weren’t very good in the format at the time (“modified modified format” or mmf). When Japan transitioned to the new card backs, they wanted a new, balanced format without overpowered cards. This intentional, downward power creep just didn’t go well with the international formats.
Ptcgradio made some good videos about the best cards an each set (The Complete History of the Pokemon TCG).
When I got back into collecting Pokémon a few years ago, I discovered the e-series and immediately fell in love. Gen 1 and 2 are my favorites and the fact that all three e sets feature super unique artwork for these gens after having received a lot of stock sugamori artwork is the cherry on top of it all. Add in the fact that Skyridge had a “lower” print run that usual and it’s a recipe for a spectacular set with a lot of demand.
I love e-Series! one of the Best eras when it comes to the Arts. Cool coincidence My top 4 Favorite Pokemon are Raichu, Venusaur, Charizard and Ninetales and my favorite illustrator is Atsuko Nishida and she illustrated those 4 pokemon in Expedition Base set, so that makes that set automatically one of my favorites. the arts in Skyridge and Aquapolis are next level too.
Also on my Instagram like 2 years ago i did Tournaments on those 3 sets where people vote for their favorite arts and those tournaments were some of the most fun i had on instagram. amazing sets!
